“Sounds like he wanted to be able to prove he was there,”
Healy said.
“It does,” Jesse said. “And he was.”
Healy nodded. Jesse turned the coffee mug slowly in his hands. Healy was neat and quiet in the chair across from him. Tan summer suit, blue shirt, tan tie with diagonal blue stripes, snap-brimmed summer straw hat with a big blue band.
“Two people murdered,” Jesse said. “One of them famous. And no one appears to care at all.”
“Except the first wife,” Healy said.
Jesse nodded and looked out the window at the transmitter trucks parked near the station.
“And the Fourth Estate,” he said.
“I don’t think they care about Carey and Walton,” Healy said.
“No,” Jesse said. “Of course they don’t. They’re just subject matter.”
Healy nodded.
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“Ellen Migliore,” Jesse said. “Who’s divorced from Walton twenty years or more. She’s the only one.”
“I wonder why she cares?” Healy said.
“Something ulterior?” Jesse said.
“Doesn’t hurt to think about it,” Healy said.
“No,” Jesse said. “It doesn’t.”
“Except then it leaves nobody who cares,” Healy said. Jesse looked at his coffee cup for a moment. Then he looked up at Healy.
“You and me,” Jesse said. “We care.”
“We’re supposed to,” Healy said.
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32
Jonah Levy held his office door for Jesse and waited until Jesse was seated before closing it and going to his own desk.
“Dix called me,” Dr. Levy said, “on your behalf.”
“Good,” Jesse said.
“He says you are a very smart man.”
“He would know,” Jesse said.
“How can I help you?”
“Did you treat Walton Weeks?” Jesse said.
“Myself and my colleagues.”
“For infertility?”
H I G H P R O F I L E
“Yes.”
“Successfully,” Jesse said.
“I gather that he had fathered a child before his death,”
Levy said.
“Yes. With Carey Longley.”
“We worked with her as well,” Levy said.
He was a small man in a gray suit and white shirt. His hair was receding. His glasses had gold rims. His tie was flamboyantly red and gold.
“What was the problem,” Jesse said.
Levy examined one of his thumbnails for a moment.
“Mr. Weeks rarely ejaculated,” Levy said.
“He was impotent?”
“No. He had no trouble erecting. He had trouble ejaculating.”
“So,” Jesse said. “He could do the deed, but he couldn’t, ah, finish it off.”
Levy smiled.
“One could put it that way,” he said.
“Did he ever?” Jesse said.
“Infrequently. Too infrequently, it seems, to give him much chance of engendering a child.”
“That’s it?” Jesse said. “Just that? No biomechanical obstruction, no physical dysfunction, just didn’t finish?”
“Just didn’t finish,” Levy said. “Had it been something physical, it might well have been easier to fix.”
“Why?” Jesse said.
“Why didn’t he, ah, finish?”
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“Yes.”
Levy leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head, and smiled at Jesse.
“How much time do you have?” Levy said.
“I don’t need to be board-certified,” Jesse said. “A concise summary would work.”
Levy closed his eyes and pursed his lips and tilted his head back and thought for a moment.
Then he said, “You are, I assume, familiar with ambivalence.”
Jesse smiled.
“My old friend,” he said.
“Weeks wanted a child,” Levy said. “And desperately did not want to share it with a woman.”
“That’s it?”
“There’s never an it, ” Levy said. “There are always several its. There were issues of power—if he could arouse a woman sexually, he had power. If she could cause him to ejaculate, she had power. There was rage against all the women who had failed to give him full sexual release.”
“Whom he punished by not achieving full sexual release,”
Jesse said.
“And punished him by denying him what he wanted.”
Jesse whistled softly.
“Craziness has a nice symmetry, doesn’t it,” Jesse said.
“Often,” Levy said.
“Can we say concisely why he was like this?”
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“Not really,” Levy said. “No surprise—it had to do with his mother and his childhood encounters with women. Certainly his mother sexualized their relationship.”
“She molest him?”
“In the conventional way?” Levy said. “Probably not. But because of the inappropriate nature of their relationship, sex became the ultimate expression of love and, because it was his mother, horribly frightening. And it remained so, lodged there in his unconscious, all his life.”
“So what happened?” Jesse said.
“To bring him here?”
“Yeah. He’s fifty, he’s had three wives, a million women, no kids. What made him come to you all of a sudden?”
Levy looked at his thumbnail again. He didn’t answer. Jesse waited. Finally Levy looked up at Jesse.
“I don’t know.”
“Wow,” Jesse said.
Levy smiled.
“We don’t like to say that much.”
“I say it all the time,” Jesse said.
“I’m saying it more often,” Levy said, “than I used to. Clearly, it had to do with the woman.”
“Carey Longley,” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“He wanted to have a baby with her.”
“Yes,” Levy said. “They talked of buying a home together.”
“Where?” Jesse said.
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“In Paradise,” Levy said. “Unless they were being metaphorical.”
“What about his current wife?”
“It is my impression he had given her no thought. He was entirely consumed with this relationship.”
“Ain’t love grand,” Jesse said.
Levy smiled. The two men sat quietly for a moment.
“What do you think about love, Doctor?” Jesse said.
“I remain agnostic about love,” Levy said. “But there is clearly a connection between . . . there clearly was a connection between them that seemed to have been lacking in other instances.”
“What made her special?”
“I don’t know,” Levy said.
“Did he have an explanation?”
“He simply said that he loved her, and had never loved anyone else.”
“You talk with her?”
“Yes.”
“She deserve it?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know that deserve is an issue in these kinds of situations,” Levy said. “She seemed to reciprocate.”
“So it wasn’t because she was, for lack of a better word, better than all the others?”
Levy looked at Jesse for a moment.
“No, often in these matters, flaws are the appeal.”
“How about in this case?”
“I don’t know,” Levy said.
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“But if you weren’t agnostic about it, you could probably say that we love who we love whether we should or not, even though there are more suitable people to love.”
“Are we still talking about Mr. Weeks?” Levy said. Jesse was silent for a moment. He could feel his heartbeat; he was aware of his own breathing. Then he smiled at Levy.